Why Gopal Kanda almost allied with the BJP — and then did not

Kanda continued to extend support to the BJP inside and outside the Assembly before and after his acquittal. In 2021, his brother Govind Kanda also joined the BJP. Three days after he joined the BJP, Govind was fielded as a candidate for the Ellenabad bypoll, which was necessitated after sitting MLA Abhay Chautala had resigned in support of farmers protesting against the three farm legislations. Chautala contested the bypolls and went on to defeat Govind by 6,700 votes.

Come election time, the BJP and HLP tried to make their alliance work. After losing the Sirsa Lok Sabha seat to the Congress’s Kumari Selja, the BJP was looking to regain lost ground in the area. In August, Haryana Chief Minister Nayab Singh Saini visited Kanda’s home in Sirsa. Later, Saini told mediapersons that the BJP would contest the Haryana Assembly polls with the HLP. Earlier this month, Kanda also met Union Minister Dharmendra Pradhan and is said to have sought 15 seats to contest the polls in alliance with the BJP. However, the BJP did not agree to Kanda’s demands.

Kanda, who is contesting from Sirsa as the lone HLP candidate, told The Indian Express that the talks did not “materialise”. “Yes, talks with the BJP were going on. Chief minister Nayab Singh Saini also came to me and I also went and met the senior BJP leadership in New Delhi, but the alliance or any seat-sharing arrangement did not materialise. The media was publishing that I was demanding 10-15 seats from the BJP… That is incorrect. It is just that the talks did not materialise because the BJP might have had something else on its mind.”

On his new alliance with the INLD and Mayawati’s BSP, Kanda said, “As per our arrangement, INLD, BSP and HLP shall jointly contest the Haryana polls. My brother Govind Kanda who had filed nomination in Fatehabad has stepped down. My nephew (Govind’s son Dhawal) was earlier being fielded by us in Rania, but now we will support Arjun Chautala (Abhay Chautala’s son and INLD nominee). The HLP shall be supporting the INLD and BSP on all the other seats that they are contesting. We have come to a mutual understanding.”

Kanda’s relationship with the Chautalas

Kanda was a close aide of the Chautalas when he began his political career. In 2004, ahead of that year’s Assembly polls, Kanda had welcomed then chief minister Om Prakash Chautala (Abhay’s father) with a garland of currency notes reportedly worth Rs 80 lakh.

In 2009, Kanda sought an INLD ticket but was not considered. Upset, he contested as an Independent from Sirsa and won the election. That election saw the Congress fall short of a majority. Bhupinder Singh Hooda who was seeking a second term negotiated with Kanda. A hard bargainer, Kanda did not rest for anything less than a ministerial berth and got the Home portfolio. While he became close to Hooda, his relationship with the Chautalas became strained. Kanda resigned as Home minister in August 2012, when he was booked on charges of abetment of suicide in the case of Geetika Sharma who worked at his aviation firm MDLR airlines.

Two years later, in the 2014 Haryana state Assembly polls, when the Congress did not field Kanda from Sirsa, he announced his own political party.